Customer Reviews

Live On Maxwell Street 1964

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This disc contains extraordinary music. It contains the first known recordings of Carey Bell (who was about 28 in 1964). It contains one of the very few glimpses we have of Robert Nighthawk in an informal setting. Highlights include Nighthawk's growling guitar work on "Goin' Down To Eli's;" some of the most extraordinary electric blues guitar playing ever recorded on "I Need Love So Bad;" Nighthawk doing the two songs that brought him his first real fame--"Annie Lee" and "Sweet Black Angel" (here listed as "Maxwell Street Medley"); and a lively rendition of "Take It Easy Baby." Not to be overlooked, however is fine harp work by Carey Bell doing "Juke" (here erroneounsly entitled "Mr. Bell's Shuffle"). In short, this music captures the excitement of raw, live blues on Chicago's Maxwell Street in its heyday. Sadly, it is not widely known that the material presented on this disc was bootlegged ! by Mr. Dayron, who did his recording while working for Mike Shea while Shea was making his now-legendary Maxwell Street documentary "And This Is Free." Fortunately, an official two-CD release of all of the "And This Is Free" material is in the works. The discs will include this music and much more, and they will tell the true story of the making of "And This Is Free." They will also include some of the wealth of band chatter, crowd sounds, and ambience of Maxwell Street that was captured on the original tapes (but cut out of the release reviewed here) back when the likes of Nighthawk, Carey Bell, Johnny Young, and Big John Wrencher could be heard live for a dime in a hat--literally.

This kind of blues is like the record of a lost civilization - gone so long that we've almost forgotten how much it accomplished in its prime. In the 36 years since this album was recorded, electric-guitar blues has been buffed and polished to a high shine but we've lost too much in the process. The rough edges that got sanded away took with them the very texture of the blues - leaving the listener with nothing to hold on to.

If that strikes a chord with you, grab this CD - and let it grab you right back. It's rough, raw and gritty - a musical snapshot of the streets on which it was recorded. As I listen to it again and again, I find myself listening *through* it, hoping to to catch the sounds of the city and the very moment in which it was recorded. This is the blues stained with sweat, nicotine and cheap beer on a hot summer afternoon - and it's intoxicating.

Mr. Alcroft is exactly right this disc the double version is already avaible as a Japanise import its a little pricy but worth double or triple the asking price as I said before its down and dirty blues that you can feel down to your bones its sends shivers up your spine and transports you to a place called Maxwell street I give this 6 stars

This is the original CD version of the first unauthorized release of this music. Rounder--with unbelievable audacity--has just reissued this disc with bonus tracks that sound to this writer like they were lifted from Rooster's recent 3-CD release "And This Is Maxwell Street," which was the first and only authorized release of this music--and much, much more.

My advice to anyone interested in Robert Nighthawk and in hearing the raw, unedited, electric blues of Chicago played by some of the masters that molded the style is to forget this and go get "And This Is Maxwell Street." "And This Is Maxwell Street" includes all the music on this disk but mastered from the original tapes made for Mike Shea's documentary film "And This Is Free," the original source of these recordnigs, plus all the band chatter and street ambience that was edited out of the compilation reviewed here. The new Rooster release also includes tracks by Johnny Young, Big John Wrencher, Carey Bell, James Brewer's gospel group, Arvella Grey, and Michael Bloomfield. The full Bloomfield interview of Robert Nighthawk (44 minutes!) appears on that three-CD deluxe set, which also has a 60-page booklet lavishly illustrated with new, rare photos, and includes a full explanation of how these recordings came to be.

I personally see no need to bother with the CD reviewed here at all when the far superior "And This Is Maxwell Street" is available. It is no surprise that "And This Is Maxwell Street" was nominated for a W.C. Handy award. It is no surprise that it has won three Living Blues Awards--best historical blues recording in the critics poll, best historical blues recording in the readers poll, and best liner notes of ANY blues recording in its year of release.

This is no studio album -- it was recorded on in about 1963 on Maxwell Street in Chicago, sort of a gathering place for blues musicians then, and you can hear the crowd that happened by, you can hear the screw-ups that always accompany a live performance, and you can hear some tough, gritty blues that puts you as close as you'll ever get to sitting there in the crowd and listening to these guys in their element. Nighthawk was a wandering man -- he travelled up adn down the Mississippi from teh Deep South to St. Louis and Chicago and back again over and over again. This album was recorded during a stop in Chicago, and it's a gem. If you were to buy this album and "Bricks in my pillow" from Delmark you would have in your hands two albums by Nighthawk that are among the best ever recorded. He hasn't been nearly as popular as some of his contemporaries, but that may have had as much to do with teh fact that he was quiet, pretty shy and itinerant as anything else. Listen to these albums and you'll have found a great artist.

Bootlegged or not, this is some of the best live blues ever recorded. Robert Nighthawk was one of the greatest slide players ever and this CD is a gem.

This is a great cd best played at a very LOUD volume. Very loose, these guys were probobly having more fun playing these tunes than one can imagine making listening to them most enjoyable.Great slide guitar By Robert Nighthawk.If you like Houndog Taylor get this CD,He probably did and is playing it in blues heaven right now.If you want clean well produced this aint it. It is down in the dirt music very good the way this kinda blues should be played

High production values are great, but they have never made a great record. This is the real deal, noisy, recorded live, on the street, in what has to be, along with the gritty, hole-in-the-wall clubs that once dotted Chicago, one of the most natural venues for urban blues. A case of blues "vérité", I guess. The natural essence of the thing. The main ingredient is, for want of a better word, feel. Never mind that the playing is up there in terms of blues chops. What this is all about is believing that as long as you are playing and singing, or listening to someone else play and sing, the blues (which speaks of the frustration, hurt and yes, sometimes, despair of life, hard in and of itself, but made even harder by those who, in fact if not spirit, control you and your fate), you know you are still alive and that there is hope. Blues is sort of like exorcism: speak the name of what bedevils you, so that you may be set free. I have little to add as comments on the music on this record, which I would urge anyone to listen to, but what provides added insight is the interview to be found on it. I was intrigued by Robert Nighthawk's tone throughout this interview which, to my mind, is the tone of a man expressing both a desire to share across the divide of age and culture his experience of the blues and, maybe more tellingly, a certain reluctance at giving away too much, a certain modesty in not bearing without reservation his soul to what he may have perceived as an outsider, and a sort of world-weariness, if not outright scepticism, in the face of the interest afforded him. If the blues is a great spotlight on the human condition of a marginalized and abused people, Robert Nighthawk's music is as bright and cutting a light as any I have found. This music is as unadulterated as you can get: both in its form and its content. It is the truth, only as the real blues can be.